


corridors of the heart and mind

by Gretahs



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Multi, Relationship Negotiation, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5535449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gretahs/pseuds/Gretahs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“An exciting change for the greatest pilot in the Resistance,” the General tells him, “I would hope that we have a more successful trip than last time.”</p><p>
“I would argue that my last mission was very successful, ma’am.” In more ways than she knows. It’s early enough that Finn is still pretending to be asleep, and Rey is curled next to him, a tiny lump in the pile of blankets.</p>
<p>
(a sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5483918">room of heartbeats</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	corridors of the heart and mind

**Author's Note:**

> this originally had a plot but i hated it and now it's all fluff. merry late christmas everyone!
> 
> this really has no plot
> 
>  **notes:** i've always headcanoned rey as ace, so she is in this fic, and it deals with some level of discomfort concerning sex, and the idea of consent. it is talked about and figured out, tho (or at least, it's figured out to the best of my ability)

“You did the lip thing,” Finn says.

“What?” Poe looks up from where he’s using a metal wipe on BB-8’s sides (it’s been weeks, and he still finds sand in the thin plates of metal). Finn is sitting on his bed, frowning at him, his chin rested on his hands. “What lip thing?

“This,” Finn replies, before biting his lower lip in a very exaggerated manner. “You did that, after we got back to the base. When Rey had been kidnapped.”

“Oh,” Poe says. He’d been trying to subtly flirt before the inertia of his brief stint in First Order incarceration caught up with him. Admittedly, he’d been a little caught up in the moment. “I… yeah. I was trying to flirt.”

Finn looks very unimpressed.

“Well you can’t say it didn’t work can you?” Poe points out, waving the cloth at him.

“It looked like you were trying to do more than flirt.”

Finn hasn’t quite picked up the nuances of flirting yet, but he’s trying his best.

“Maybe I was.” Poe says, leaning back on his hands.

Finn cocks an eyebrow, but leans down to kiss him anyway. This has become something that they do a lot of now: one of them will say something purposely antagonizing, or stupidly sappy, and then the other will perform the appropriate response. If it’s Finn, Poe usually gets a kiss, but if it’s Poe, he acts like a smartass, and just beams at Finn, blinking his eyelashes at him until he cracks.

The kiss is warm, and soft, until Poe feels Finn smile against his lips, and then Finn starts to apply pressure, pushing further into his mouth. It’s an awkward angle, and from its position on the floor BB-8 makes a series of startled beeps that roughly translate to: [IT IS GOOD THAT FRIEND-FINN HAS IMPROVED HIS KISSING TECHNIQUE.]

And Poe has to break the kiss, trying not to laugh, while Finn shoots BB-8 a desperate look as the droid rolls merrily across the floor and under the bunk. Poe throws down the rag and stands, snorting as Finn pokes under the bed with his shoe, before turning Finn’s face by holding his cheeks, and kissing him again. Finn pretends to resist before sinking into it. Poe’s wearing the jacket again, after he briefly complained about being cold, and Finn’s hands sink into the soft leather, before sliding it off his shoulders. It gets caught on his arms, and he has to drop his hands, so Finn takes the opportunity to slide his fingers up the back of his shirt, raising goosebumps along his skin. The jacket falls to the floor, and Poe feels his boot step on it when he moves backwards as Finn wraps his arms around his waist, deepening the kiss. Still trying not to laugh, Poe briefly breaks the kiss, pressing another to the corner of Finn’s lips before they meet again.

Finn seems almost impatient, pushing forward into Poe’s mouth, so he moves his hands to Finn’s scalp, rubbing gently. His hair’s getting long enough to have the slightest bit of pull, and he tugs a little, trying to steady the pace. Finn groans but complies, the kiss turning softer and more mellow, and then something round and hard and giggling to itself shoots out from beneath the bed and hits Finn’s calves from behind, forcing Poe to trip on the jacket and sending them both falling downwards to the floor as BB-8 merrily whirs out of sight. Finn’s elbow is in his spleen, and before he buries his face in Poe’s neck, his expression is one of fake annoyance. Poe just presses a kiss to his forehead, and resolves never to tell Rey about this, ever.

 

There are lots of things Poe doesn’t understand: sometimes Rey will look off into the distance, as though watching through the eyes of someone worlds away, or will laugh at something he thought and only just opened his mouth to say. It always makes his skin crawl.

He doesn’t bring it up, because Rey always looks stricken when she realises what she’s done without meaning too.

She kisses like the universe is ending, throwing her whole body forward against his. He isn’t sure what she and Finn did together before they ambushed him in his bunk, but together Rey and Finn move like they’re having a conversation by kissing each other very awkwardly on the mouth and trying to figure out how kisses work. Poe is trying his best to take it slow, because he doesn’t think that either he nor the two of them are ready for anything too serious straight off the bat, and he knows that Rey is still struggling to understand whatever power has awoken inside her.

There’s casual contact, more than Poe is used too with any of the other serious relationships he’s had in his life, and Finn and Rey touch and hug or hold hands in the mess hall, and in the hanger, and in the Falcon. They sleep in a bed together, and so far it’s been just sleeping and the joys of close proximity in a highly populated military base, which makes Poe think about the secret trysts he’d had with other kids when he was younger, right under his parents’ noses.

Finn and Poe’s relationship was born out of necessity, but since Luke’s return they’ve been waiting in comparable silence for Ren and Snoke to make the first move, so he looks for ways to show Rey the things she’s been missing out on.

Poe takes her flying; he bribes Jess by trading an hour or two with her X-Wing for one of her standard reconnaissance missions in the Outer Rim, and spends the better part of an afternoon listening to Rey’s monologue as she talks about the differences between this and the Falcon.

“It’s weird to be sitting in the middle, you know?” She says, “I’m used to having a huge hunk of barely functioning garbage hanging out of my left side.”

Afterwards, they sit on the wing of his ship, and Rey takes his helmet and puts it on. Although Jess’ fit her, Poe’s is much too big, and the rim slips down over her eyes, and when she leans back, it wobbles violently from side to side.

He doesn’t bring up that, either.

 

These are things he knows: Rey likes kissing, and holding hands, and not much else.

“We tried it, before,” Rey tells him once. The before is when Poe still had his head up his ass. “Neither of us knew what we were doing, really, because Force knows growing up on Jakku isn’t a prime location for in-depth sex education.” She hesitates. “I don’t think I’m into this.”

“Define _‘this.’”_

She gives a one shoulder shrug. Her new clothes are the same grey as the garb from the desert, and the pale skin of her shoulder is still visible. “I don’t know, just stuff. And I mean, I don’t hate it.”

Poe doesn’t like where this is going.

“It’s just… sometimes the touching gets a bit weird. Or uncomfortable, for me.” She hurriedly waves her hands, looking defensive. “It’s not that I hate it! And I know you and Finn like it, so it’s fine. And both of you have done too much for me already.”

Poe suddenly connects the dots,

“Rey, you don’t owe me anything.”

“But on Jakku–”

“We’re not on Jakku. I don’t take you flying just because I want you to give me something back. You should’ve told me if we were doing stuff you didn’t like.”

At this, she almost looks puzzled. “Finn said the same thing,” she says, “but he’s not exactly an expert, so I wasn’t sure.”

Poe sighs heavily, and runs a hand through his hair, before reaching forward and gently grasping her shoulders with both hands. “Is this alright?” He asks.

Rey looks puzzled, so he elaborates:

“Are you comfortable with me touching you like this?”

She looks even more puzzled. “Of course. We’ve done this before, all the time.”

“Alright,” Poe says, “so you like it when we touch or hug, I’m guessing. What don’t you like?”

Rey looks at him again, the same expression Luke sometimes gives him, and it makes him feel flayed open and raw. “I don’t like… not being able to move.”

He guesses that whatever happened to her in captivity was different to him: Poe’s found that the feeling of Finn curled up behind him, or BB-8 whirring against can be the only thing anchoring him, convincing him that what’s happening is real. Everything that happened to him was in his head, and having a physical connection to reality has essentially severed some degree of his disassociation. After all, even Luke Skywalker can only do so much. Rey, though… she had been held down and unable to escape, and while she’d eventually bested both Kylo Ren and her captors, she had still trapped. Defenceless. She waits for his nod, before continuing.

“Hugs are good, I like hugs,” Rey says, “and I know you like hugs, and Finn loves hugs.”

“You don’t have to do anything because you think other people will like it.”

“I’m not. I never do that.” Which is true, except that she apparently _has_ been. She pauses in consideration. “Kisses are nice, I’m getting quite good at those.”

When he doesn’t immediately agree, she glares at him.

“Well,” he shrugs, turning his head to hide his smile, “you’re not getting worse.”

She shoves him, laughing.

“Finn said he was the better kisser.”

“Finn doesn’t even have a last name yet; he’s not the authority on these things.” Poe tells her, relaxing a little, although he still feels guilty about not noticing this earlier. He was supposed to be the experienced one. “Rey, if you don’t want to do this, I –”

“No!” She cuts in, slapping a hand over his mouth. “I do. I care about you, and Finn, really more than I’ve cared about anyone, and I don’t want to stop. I just… I understand if you want to stop because I don’t think I can do a lot of the… relationship stuff.”

Poe gently pries his fingers away from his mouth, before pressing a kiss against her hand. “I’m not in this for sex,” he tells her, “and I’m not going to call it quits just cause you’re learning about what you do and don’t feel comfortable with. Just make sure to tell me if I do something that you don’t like.”

Then he kisses her on the cheek, just below her left eye.

She huffs a laugh, and cups his chin. “I said you could kiss me, Dameron,” she says fondly, and kisses him on the mouth.

 

Finn, by comparison, has loosened up from sleeping like a plank of wood, arms tucked neatly at his sides, feet together, and has instead turned into a human octopus. Poe has taken to mapping out the journeys across the bed he takes while unconscious on spare flimsies, and laughing about then in the morning, (“You’re getting good mileage, aren’t you?” “Shut up, Dameron.”). Always searching for heat, and touch, and more often than not Poe wakes up in the morning with what can only be described as a very large, very affectionate Ewok spooning his back. One thing Finn hasn’t been able to out of is snapping awake before dawn, so by the time Poe manages to extract himself and roll out of bed, Finn is vibrating with the need to move.

Finn kisses like he’s afraid Poe or Rey are going to vanish, or leave him behind. He likes to hold them very close, as though to remind himself that they’re there and, when he thinks Poe is asleep, sometimes whispers “mine” into the back of his neck like a promise. The idea of owning anything, whether it be a name or a jacket or a blaster, was a different sort of difficulty to overcome than Rey’s investigation of what she didn’t like. For a week or two, all Finn did was experiment on what could be considered personal items and what was shared amongst people. He took particular pleasure in draping his jacket over Rey or Poe at alternating times, and then taking it back where he wanted it. Once, Poe fell asleep at his desk, and awoke with the jacket over his head, and Finn and Rey fast asleep in his bed.

Poe isn’t sure if it’s from how they met, and he can’t speak for Rey, but there’s an always an underlying protectiveness by Finn for him, whether it’s against the First Order, or Kylo Ren, or even Luke, if Poe comes back to his room trembling and exhausted from one of their sessions. Sometimes it borders on near hilarity, similarly to Finn’s fake bravado that he uses when he’s trying to figure out how to react in a situation. 

Like that time he found out private refreshers were a thing: the base hot water supply still hasn’t quite recovered.

Luke is a very steadying presence: a small, but calm centre in the chaos of the destruction of the New Republic. If he isn’t in the training room, he’s talking with the General, or he’s sitting in silence with Chewbacca in the cockpit of the Falcon. When he’s going out for standard maintenance on his X-Wing, Poe finds him standing on the tarmac, carefully inspecting one of the newer ships.

“A little different from what I’m used to,” Luke says, when Poe shows him the controls and console, “but you know, I’m really glad they kept the orange suit.”

Poe’s never seen Luke fly, but watching Luke and Rey with the lightsabers is watching two halves of a single person somehow moving separately in one room. Poe’s seen people use a lightsabre before: Kylo Ren’s savagery as he cut down Lor San Tekka, and Luke’s lessons for Finn are far more focused on practicality, rather than the use of the Force. If he thinks hard about it, Poe can visualise a blurry memory of glowing blue and green light, and a hundred people moving in the same trance-like state he sometimes sees in Rey. That memory is tinged in the grey of what would become, the sudden disappearance of the Jedi, and the rise of the First Order.

Rey attacks her training with a dedicated violence, years on Jakku with a staff reflecting in her unabashed slashing and smacking on her opponents with the training sword. Often, she just wears Finn down with her brutal blows, teeth clenched in victory. Finn operates well under pressure, with his instincts quick to dodge and parry, even though holding a blade is much different than having a finger on the trigger. What Poe loves seeing the most, is Finn’s genuine level of emotion whenever he fights: that he could forge his own path away from his birth, they he could become an agent of the light. Poe doesn’t watch them often, because the light show still makes him dizzy, and even with Luke carefully observing his well-being whenever they’re in the same room, there comes a point where he has to stand up and leave the room to take a breather, hearing the faint hum from the corridor, with BB-8 sitting by his feet. He tries not to leave too often though, because any Finn/Luke interaction is always stellar.

Finn is holding the activated lightsabre, eyes watching the push and pull of energy, swinging it idly around with a steady grip while Luke quietly corrects his posture.

“I still feel a little weird about this,” Finn says, “using the lightsaber without the Force. You teaching me is a lot different to you teaching Rey.”

“Think of it as a glowing sword,” Luke says, “for you, the only thing you need to know is how to use it safely to your own benefit, and to correctly anticipate whatever Kylo Ren may throw at you in a battle. I wouldn’t have agreed to train you if I didn’t think you were capable.” He smiles. “And you’re very capable at this. I’m not teaching you like Rey because you’re not Rey.”

“Were lightsabers more common, before?” Finn asks, deactivating it and rolling the hilt in his palms. “Could people without the Force learn to use them outside the Jedi?”

“Everyone is Force sensitive to a degree,” says Luke. “The Force is everything and nothing, and every living thing is connected to the energy of the universe. There have always been beings who use lightsabers without that connection.”

“General Grievous, for one,” says an amber haired woman who peers briefly into the room before ducking out again. Luke smiles at her in greeting.

“A general, huh?” Finn asks, impressed. “Was he anything like me?”

“If stories are to be believed, he was a psychotic four armed android with authority issues,” Luke says mildly, “so no, not especially.”

 

Jess finally calls him in for that favour, so he suits up and goes to the meeting room for one final brief, BB-8 rolling behind him. As always, the holographic centre is active, and Statura is rapidly zooming in and out of what looks like the last remaining schematics of the Starkiller base. General Organa is standing with her arms folded, watching the proceedings, her face expressionless. When she catches sight of him, with his helmet tucked under his arm, she looks amused.

“I thought Pava was on this assignment,” She says, her question sounding more like a statement.

“I owe her a favour, ma’am,” Poe replies, relaxing his pose as the plans change to instead show his proposed journey. There’s supposedly an inactive base on Tatooine that runs a risk of being in use again, and Poe’s only task is to briefly inspect it before passing on. It’s a cycle that’s a part of a new, galaxy wide sweep by the Resistance, searching for any mention of Kylo Ren. “I’ll be taking the mission.”

“An exciting change for the greatest pilot in the Resistance,” the General tells him, “I would hope that we have a more successful trip than last time.”

“I would argue that my last mission was very successful, ma’am.” In more ways than she knows. It’s early enough that Finn was still pretending to be asleep, and Rey was curled next to him, a tiny lump in the pile of blankets.

“More personally successful then,” she amends, before adding, “I hear you’ve been spending time with my brother.”

At that, he feels an unnecessary flush of shame. Of course Luke would tell her: it’s within his rights, and really he’d never talked about wanting to keep it private. After all, Poe had told Rey and Finn about it. This sense of betrayal is completely unjustified.

“I… yes, ma’am,” he replies, and hesitates before answering, “I wasn’t aware that Luke had told you, but I can assure you that I’m still more than capable.”

The General gives him a look so condescending he feels physically affected by it. “Luke isn’t the only one with the Force,” she says in a tone very similar to Luke’s, “but even if I didn’t, Luke has a habit of attachment, and keeping people’s secrets even if he can’t lie for shit. And I wasn’t doubting your competency, I was just questioning your decision. There’s nothing wrong with needing to recover.”

“I think getting some fresh air might be the best cure to that, ma’am,” Poe says, which is almost true, “You know me, I’ve always been one for the outdoors.” Even though now the sheer openness of it scares him in its similarity to Kylo Ren’s clinical hands in his brain.

“I think you misunderstood me,” the General says, “I am politely telling you that I don’t want you on this mission.”

“But ma’am-”

“Sending you out on a mission of this scale is detrimental to what we’ve achieved so far,” she says, “for both the Resistance as a whole, and for you.” When he says nothing, her expression softens slightly. “Poe,” she says, “I don’t want to send anyone out just yet. We _all_ need to recover. But not everyone was quite so engaged directly as you, so this is me, your commanding officer, telling you to go and rest.”

He opens his mouth to try to convince her one last time, but she gives him a look, and he shuts it again. Logically, he knows he shouldn’t feel bad, or guilty for this. Really he should feel thankful that he can go back to bed and not go back up into space, with it’s just emptiness except for the sound of his engines and BB-8’s ongoing commentary about what it thinks the stars look like.

As he turns to walk away, the General says: “Make sure to say hello to Finn and Rey, for me.”

Poe can feel the flush to the tips of his ears.

 

Really, there’s only so many times he can perform standard maintenance of the X-Wing he’s not allowed to fly without going mad, so he takes to watching plans in the meeting room, or watching Finn and Rey, or sitting with Luke for long periods of silence.

He knows there’s something a little bit wrong with him when those silences are neither awkward nor oppressive, and instead he lets his eyes follow the circles BB-8 makes in the room, feeling everything else fade away. Luke calls it meditation, but Poe isn’t sure he can do that without the Force, so he just calls it “sitting with Luke for long periods of silence.” The world can sometimes be too much, but everything goes quiet in their room, when it’s just the three of them and the door is closed.

A lot of it is them sharing the same breath, pressed together and lying still.

Sometimes though, usually when Rey is off learning how to centre herself or stand in the proper form or maybe slicing bread with her lightsaber, Finn experiments with what he likes, and what he likes to do to Poe.

His kisses are becoming less messy and more intense: he focuses on Poe’s neck and his shoulders, leaving scattered bands of heat against his skin while Poe leans back with his eyes closed and tries not to make too much noise. He’s pressed back against the bunk, and he wraps his arm around Finn’s neck, pulls him up and closer into an open kiss, and he shivers as Finn takes his time exploring the inside of his mouth, running his tongue along his teeth.

Right when he starts to feel dizzy then break for air, and he presses his lips against Finn’s throat, letting his comforting weight sink him further into the bed. He’s here, and this is happening. He rocks up, and Finn makes a gasping noise. Poe looks up to see that Finn’s eyes are wide, before he’s pulled into a bruising kiss and he’s being pressed down everywhere, the sudden heaviness making him jerk and pant into Finn’s mouth.

Finn’s grip tightens, and he moves a knee in between Poe’s legs so he can push himself up. Poe has to stop himself from following the kiss.

Finn is breathing heavily, eyes now half closed, shoulders shaking from the strain of holding himself.

“Buddy?” Poe asks, running hands soothingly up and down his back, “are you alright?”

“Don’t call me buddy when we’re doing this,” Finn mutters, but he’s smiling, his eyes soft. Poe has to swallow. “Are you.. are you good?”

Poe risks shifting a little, so Finn can feel exactly how _good_ with this he is. Even the dim light, he can see Finn’s cheeks turn ruddy, and he leans down again. This kiss is slower, but then Finn’s leg moves (and it _must_ be on purpose) right against his crotch and Poe’s left scrabbling at the sheets, struggling to inhale.

He also feels a bit pathetic, getting this caught up in things while Finn still isn’t really sure what he’s doing, but then the weight is back on him, and Finn’s hands are in his hair, and the world is quiet again.

 

“You look happy,” Jess says, while Poe is pretending to enjoy the food long enough for him to actually swallow some it. He pauses.

“I am, yeah.” Poe says, and then realises that he means it. He smiles.

Jess leans in over the table, waggling her eyebrows. “What’s that for? Thinking about how that bunk getting too small yet?”

“I’m _thinking_ that it’s none of your business,” Poe says firmly. The soup tastes like crushed dreams, and he idly stirs it with his spoon so he doesn’t have to eat any more of it.

“You are my sole source of entertainment at the moment.”

“I’m also technically your commanding officer, Testor.”

She waves her hand, effectively brushing off his albeit weak attempt to pull rank. “Sure, sure, Boss. But like I was saying, the boy or the girl?”

“I really don’t want to talk about this with you,” Poe says.

“Is that why he asked me for sex tips?” Jess asks.

Poe feels the bottom of his stomach drop.

“ _Finn asked you for sex tips?!”_

“No,” Jess says with a laugh, “but can you tell him that I’d give them if he wanted?”

“You just want to know too much about my sex life.”

She shrugs, not bothering to deny it. “We’ve been grounded for weeks. It’d be foolish to bottle up my naturally curious nature.”

“Foolish isn’t the word I’d use. _Nice_ is probably closer.”

She pokes out her tongue at him, and then begins to demonstrate her plans for a new squad maneuver using her sandwich and one of her hair ties.

 

It feels great to be in the air again, even better that Rey is flying just ahead of him, and Finn is in the seat behind. They’re in a two person ship, because Luke had apparently spent the previous evening talking about his experiences using the Force in the air, and Rey would jump on any opportunity to fly an X-Wing. And then somehow Poe got dragged into it, because Finn’s a good shot but he knows shit all about piloting. So far, they’ve just been flying in lazy circles over D’Qar’s surface, watching as Rey falls into a pattern as she tries to find her balance.

“Are you still alright with this?” Poe asks eventually, leaving the radio on. The sky above them is clear and bright, and he feels loose. Over the static, he hears BB-8 quietly humming a rhyme about birds that fly through space. He’s pretty sure Rey taught that to it.

He can’t see Finn’s face, but he feels his jerk against the seat. There’s a pause, then:

“It’s different with you, and Rey,” he says, “like training with Luke. More comfortable, fit for each of us better, you know?”

“I know,” Poe replies, feeling proud that they can talk about this.

Finn shifts, looking nervous. “I mean, me and Rey… but that didn’t go so well. I tried looking stuff up to see if it would help.”

“He did,” Rey’s amused, crackling voice through the speaker confirmed. “Very dedicated.”

“You didn’t really ask Jess Pava for sex tips did you?” Poe asks.

 _“What?”_ Finn splutters, “I - no!”

“Thank the Force.”

“Why would you even ask that?!”

“She thinks she has a good sense of humour,” Poe says cheerfully, performing a very unnecessary spin to match the sudden weightlessness in his stomach.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so glad i can add writing smut to the list of things i'm incapable of executing well
> 
>  **edit:** there's now a sort of [sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5786089)
> 
> i have a [tumble](http://gretahs.tumblr.com)!


End file.
